VizThink is a global community for visual thinkers and communicators who like to get beyond words and believe that visuals can be an effective tool whether you're just trying to work through your ideas or working to get your message across as simply as possible.

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While you may know us so far from our events, our primary goal is to grow and support the visual thinking community. Over the next 6 weeks there will be several announcements about services we’re offering the community. One of the services we’re offering is research. Some will be high-level overviews and some will be deep dives. Some will be theoretical and some will be practical. This is the first in a series of many research projects we’ll be doing on behalf of the community.

Teaching and training have traditionally been heavily textual. However, as evidenced by the number of people in training & learning at our event in San Francisco, we see a new interest in all types of visualization for learning. This includes visualization by hand (drawing, sketching, etc.) as well as the use of visually-oriented technology (digital cameras, video cameras, scanners, editing and publishing tools, visually-oriented authoring tools, etc.).

We are seeking submissions to publish in a report that showcases the range of how visualization is being used for learning today.

We would like to know how you use visualization in a particular teaching situation.

It’s easy to focus on the visual. In fact, that’s probably one reason we believe so strongly in visual thinking. It helps people brainstorm, process, organize, plan, and communicate information more effectively. However, we so often talk about the visual aspects of our field (photo, 3D, sketching, color, proximity, flow, etc) that we forget there’s a thinking part as well. The purpose of the visual isn’t necessarily to save us from having to think (although it can do that, for sure), but it can also be used to cause us to think more deeply and to think of things that we may not have thought of before.

I recently had the privilege to spend some time with industry veteran and guru Bob Horn in his San Francisco office. Filled to the top with years of books, reading, research, and writing, he has amassed a myriad of experience in visual thinking. Not only has he research and written about the theories of visual thinking, he has also put them into practice with local and national governments, global organizations, and non-profits of all shapes and sizes. His preference is to focus on the “wicked” problems such as climate change and apply visual thinking techniques to help change the world. During our time together, we recorded a 28-minute podcast where we cover a variety of topics such as:

Murals

Systems Thinking

Argument maps

Use of a mess to communicate a message

Visual Thinking is about both the Visual and the Thinking

At VizThink ’09, we’ll talk with Bob in more detail on the main stage about working with messy, wicked problems of public policy and how various intermediate kinds of visualization can facilitate the process of early brainstorming, deep analysis, detailed planning, creating drafts for early feedback, and looping back through the analysis and design process as gaps show up. In addition, Bob will have a 90-minute breakout session on the core of visual language as a tool for global communication. Check it out for a brief summary of his book,Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century.

Be sure to join us for this exciting set of sessions and to learn first hand with an industry veteran and guru. For more information on this and all of the other great sessions at VizThink ’09, be sure to check out our conference wiki. The draft schedule is up, so you can begin to plan your conference experience. We have just 20 days left until the event in San Jose. Be sure to register now so you’ll be sure to reserve your space and not miss this exciting conference.

VizThink Store is Now OpenWe’re pleased to announce the addition of the VizThink Store to our website. You can access it through the link above or through the new “store” tab in the main navigation of our site.

In it you’ll find our top picks, books by our conference facilitators and even supplies and software related to visual thinking – we’ve even got city guides for the locations of our upcoming conferences!

We’ll be continually reviewing and refreshing the contents of this store as new materials become available.

If you’ve got a suggestion drop us an email or registered members can also post their recommendations in the new Books forum on our community network site.

Safe and Secure Shopping
Payment and fulfillment is all handled through Amazon so you can shop knowing your information is secure and a reliable organization is behind getting your books to you – best of all you’re helping to support the growth and development of the VizThink community, to which we all belong.

slide:ology is one of my favorite business books of the year so far, and, yes, it is a business book. In fact, I think it should be the top of any business person’s reading list. If you ever have to present an idea, pitch a product, sell a service, get approval, or provide a progress update which should cover just about every front line manager and above in an organization. I’m not alone in my praise. Garr Reynolds, presentation guru and author of Presentation Zen, calls the book his “favorite presentation book of all time.”

The crux comes very early in the book on the role that slides play. According to Nancy, they can either be a document, a teleprompter, or a presentation. Slides can be great as a document (her book was actually written using PowerPoint) or teleprompter. However, audiences shouldn’t be expected to endure slides that are more document than presentation. The remainder of this beautifully designed book is dedicated to tips and techniques on how to create effective and powerful presentations.

Filled with case studies and example’s, Nancy’s book provides tips and techniques that are both practical and inspirational at the same time. Some people may debate of the finer points in the book. Maybe the most controversial is the estimate of 36-90 hours to create a 30-slide deck. Most people would find that time commitment hard for an everyday presentation. However, if you’re trying to land that million dollar plus client or making a career-changing presentation, it could be argued that even more time might be justified. In some ways, if it’s worth presenting, it’s worth spending the time to do it well.

Maybe of most significance to me was Nancy’s explanations of the use of color and text. Arguably, these two items are the most prevalent elements of any presentation. While I though I had understood color in the past, I’ve never had it (and particularly the color wheel) explained to me in such an easy, understandable, and instantly applicable way. In a quick 14 pages, she moves from color theory into practical, usable examples.

To hear our discussion with Nancy on a variety of the topics from her book, check out our recent podcast with her. This book is both a great read and a handy reference tool. While it looks great on a coffee table, it would be a shame for it not to be near your computer to reference for every presentation you create.

I highly recommend this book as part of your personal library. It left me wanting even more. I can’t wait for the follow-up! The book is available from your local bookstore or you can order it now from our bookstore.

Nancy is also presenting next week in the Visual Thinking Online Workshop just one week from today, on Tuesday September 16th. You can talk with her and three other great presenters live (Dave Gray, David Sibbet, and Karl Gude). This is a great opportunity to hone a wide variety of your visual thinking skills with some of the best in our industry.

David Sibbet is one of the leading minds in the visual thinking & facilitation industry, and when David has a new book or product, it’s worth stopping to take notice. His organization, The Grove, is not only a great consultancy but they also produce a lot of fantastic products and resources for visual thinkers and I expect their usual quality will transfer to this latest release.

His latest book, Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity drops and if you ever have to run meetings, or are just sick of sitting through painful, unproductive meetings you’ll probably want to grab yourself a copy.

The Grove’s Description of the book:

When people work visually they have better ideas, make better decisions, and are more committed to producing results. A twenty-first century guide to using the latest visual thinking techniques with your groups and teams, Visual Meetings gives you a bounty of tools and tricks to unlock creativity, collaboration, and breakthrough thinking.

David Sibbet, a world leader in the area of graphic facilitation and visual thinking, unveils the alchemy of designing and conducting memorable meetings that get results. With more than 40 years of experience successfully incorporating visuals in meetings of all kinds, Sibbet reveals the practices, tips, and tricks that can turn business meetings into creative and productive events.

As always with visual thinking, much of the value of these techniques are in the process, not the visual output – so don’t be swayed by that little voice in the back of your head that says “I can’t draw”. In fact, The Grove offers a series of templates that do all the visual heavy lifting for you.

Be sure to check out Visual Meetings (sample chapter – PDF | get it on Amazon) and then swing back here to let us know your thoughts.

VizThink recently came across a thoughtful book review pointing out “five less-talked-about gems” in presentation master Nancy Duarte‘s latest book Resonate. The review was penned by New Zealand-based presentation trainer and blogger Olivia Mitchell and, with permission, is largely excerpted here:

1. Your audience is the hero
Nancy advocates a new attitude towards presenting.

You already know that your presentation should not be all about you and how brilliant you are (or how brilliant your company is). But what attitude should you take instead? Nancy recommends casting the audience as the hero of your presentation and suggests you, the presenter, take on the role of mentor. You invite the audience to come on a journey with you from their ordinary world to your special world – the world of your new idea, the change you’re proposing, or the product or service you’re selling:

As mentor, your role is to give the hero guidance, confidence, insight, advice, training or magical gifts so he can overcome his initial fears and enter into the new journey with you.

Casting yourself as mentor gives you both wisdom and humility. Nancy says:

Audience insights and resonance can only occur when a presenter takes a stance of humility.

2. Make the gap clear
There’s a gap between the audience’s ordinary world and your special world. It’s your job as presenter to make the gap clear and invite the audience to jump across the gap. Nancy calls this the contrast between what is andwhat could be.

Before your audience will be willing to come on a journey with you, they need to know that you understand them, that you can understand what it is like to walk in their shoes. You do this by describing what is:

You should deliver a concise formulation of what everyone agrees is true. Accurately capturing the current reality and sentiments of the audience’s world demonstrates that you have experience and insights on their situation and that you understand their perspective, context and values.

What could be is what you are leading your audience towards. The gap between what is and what could beshould be clear to your audience. No fudging or ambiguity.

3. Create and use contrast
Nancy sees contrast as being a primary way of engaging and holding the audience’s attention.

CONTENT CONTRAST
The contrast between your views and your audiences’ views will fascinate your audience. If you attempt to play down the contrast so as not to stand out or attract resistance or objections from your audience, your presentation will be bland and boring.

Nancy suggests that for every idea or point in your presentation, you think through the contrasting idea. You may not use them all in your presentation but the thinking will be useful.

EMOTIONAL CONTRAST
Contrast analytical content, such as data and facts, with emotional content such as stories, metaphors, shocking statements and surprise. Nancy suggests that you do an audit of your content, just as screenwriters do, to ensure there’s an appropriate balance between analytical and emotional content.

For a highly analytical audiences, such as scientists and economists, have less emotional content than for a lay audience, but don’t leave emotion out altogether – they are humans too.

4. Expect resistance
Acknowledging and working with the audience’s resistance and objections to your idea is a critical part of inviting them on your journey. Nancy reminds us that whenever we suggest change – whether it be organizational change, buying a new product, or even a positive move – your audience is likely to resist. That’s because change involves loss.

During your presentation, you may experience this as an apparent lack of interest, cynical body language, nitpicking over errors in your presentation and outright hostile questions or statements. Be ready for this by thinking through what objections your audience may have. Address these issues in your presentation. Nancy compares this to an inoculation:

An inoculation purposefully infects a person to minimize the severity of an infection. The same takes place when you emphatically address an audience’s refusals by stating them openly in your talk. This will help them see that you’ve thought through everything – which will decrease their anxiety.

Research has also shown that acknowledging and countering opposing viewpoints is more persuasive than only presenting your own viewpoint.

5. Something They’ll Always Remember
Create a memorable moment in your presentation – a S.T.A.R. moment (Something They’ll Always Remember). Traditional public speaking advice has advocated that this moment should be at the start of your talk – the cliched “attention-getting opening“. Nancy suggests that the attention-getting and memorable moment can be at any time in your presentation. Nancy is clear about the dangers inherent in creation of a S.T.A.R. moment:

it should magnify not distract from your big idea

it should be worthwhile and appropriate, not kitschy or cliched.

These memorable moments are a vehicle for your big idea. A memorable moment can accelerate the spread of your idea exponentially.

These are only five ideas from Resonate, there are many more. Nancy’s points are supported by detailed analysis of many presentations and speeches. If you’re a presentation geek, you’ll want this book on your bookshelf.

. . . . . . . . . .

Visit Olivia’s blog, Speaking About Presenting, for the full text of this review as well as other practical presentation tips. Thank you, Olivia!

RELATED: See and read more about Nancy Duarte’s creative process to realize Resonate in a Q&A interview with VizThink founder Dave Gray on his blog Communication Nation. (Scroll down and look for Nancy’s name.)

Last week, Jamie Nast and Chuck Frey sat down with VizThink CEO Tom Crawford and over 150 fellow visual thinkers to discuss the topic of idea mapping / mind mapping, the ideas behind it and the technologies that enable people to make use of mind mapping in a wide (and growing) variety of ways.

Following brief presentations, Jamie & Chuck both entertained a broad spectrum of questions from participants on the call. For a limited time, the full webinar is available below for your viewing pleasure right here on our blog.

It took a little longer than we expected to create, but the Visualization in Learningresearch report is finally here and the wait was well worth it. This report was developed in conjunction with the great people at Brandon-Hall Research, and in particular, our co-writer on this report, Tom Werner. In over 150 pages, we discuss 14 visually-loaded case studies on how visualization can improve the various stages of the learning development life cycle. We didn’t know what we would find when we began the project, but as the submissions came in, a story started to become clear:

Learning designers are using visual thinking techniques throughout the learning development life cycle.

Not only were people using visual thinking to improve the final output of a learning module, they were using visuals to improve brainstorming, discovery, organization, planning, and design.

Learning Development Life Cycle

We had many people send in case study submissions for this report and selecting the best of the best was a difficult process. In the end, we narrowed the list to 14 case studies that cover a wide array of topics such as:

– A Whole New Game Plan: Using Visuals to Tutor College Student-Athletes
– Using Visuals in Executive and Management Development

Communication & Persuasion:

– Visual Strategy Approach for Attorneys
– Using Visuals to Implement Processing Mapping and Improvement
– Using Visuals in Executive and Management Development
– Using Graphics to Encourage Reflection
– Graphic Recording of Training Sessions
– Using Visuals in Animal Care Specialist Training
– The Use of Visualization for Learning in the Virtual City of Behrloo

Dividing the case studies into the 3 cateories was a challenge as well. In general, if a development team used visual thinking techniques at one step, they most likely used them in all steps. However, we decided to focus on the sections where we felt they demonstrated interesting and best in class techniques.

Get your copy of the report now! We have arranged a special 30% discount for a price of $227.50 (thats $97.50 off the retail price of $325) just for our community members. Be sure to enter “VizThink” as the discount code in order to receive the lower price.

What role does realism play in visualization and simulations? When is realism important and when is it not? How does the selection of media impact learning and communication outcomes? How and when do you use mixed media? What determines those choices? Discussions on these and many other topics are just some of the things that Eric Kramer and Natascha Blijleven will be facilitating at VizThink Europe ’08 in Berlin this October.

On Tuesday, July 22nd, VizThink will be releasing our first research report. Created in conjunction with Brandon-Hall Research, this report examines 14 case studies of visualization in learning, including a feature on Eric and Natascha’s work with the Netherlands Police department. Their facinating project created a virtual city where police could solve various crimes as part of a learning simulation. It contains a large variety of mixed media including videos, photos, sketches, 3D models, interactive panoramas, and diagrams just to name a few. In police work, the visual clues (and cues) are often an important part of a crime scene. How do you know what to watch for? How real do the visuals need to be to be able transfer the learning from the simulation to the real world?

Eric was originally professor of mathematics, physics and information science. Since 1996, Eric Kramer has been the educational project manager at TriMM interactive media in the Netherlands. Since 2000, Natascha has worked as an Educational Policy Advisor at the Dutch Police Academy. As educational advisor Natascha is concerned with designing and implementation of ICT in the competence based Police education.

We will be posting a podcast with Ole in a couple weeks so be sure to watch for that. For more details on Ole, check out his bio.